Sprinter Lachie Kennedy triggered one of world athletics’ biggest dramas in 2025, and he has loved every minute. In the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it distance of 60 metres, the Australian ran a world-leading 6.43 seconds in Canberra in January, one of the top-10 fastest times in history.
Social media exploded in disbelief, but the 21-year-old Queenslander could only laugh. “It was so funny, I was just reading the comments, screenshotting and sending them to Calab [Law, his training partner and relay teammate],” Kennedy says.
Those comments are still there. “I don’t care what anyone says, that was not 6.4,” wrote one. “With all due respect, maybe I’ve just been missing him, but when he drops the world lead of 6.43, people are like, hold on, who is this guy?”, said a YouTuber. Another’s post just barked: “FAKE TIME!”
Two years ago World Athletics did away with the split between outdoor and indoor records, and the 60m has traditionally been one of the features of the indoor season. It means 60m races likes the one in Canberra in January, with a strong but legal tailwind of +1.6, are now counted towards major meet qualification and records.
But Kennedy’s time was so fast – the same as Noah Lyles’ career best – it drove even more desperate speculation. That maybe officials inaccurately recorded an even stronger wind. That the timing system was faulty. That the course was measured too short.
“There are some crazy people out there,” Kennedy says. “It was honestly so funny, so entertaining, I don’t think I’ve had more fun in the sport than after I ran that time, and then all the people started talking.”
That noise has been quietened by his performances in the past two months. The former rugby winger, who only started taking sprinting seriously in his final year of high school, ran a 10.03s in the 100m – the equal-third fastest time by an Australian alongside Matt Shirvington – and helped Australia’s 4x100m relay team featuring Joshua Azzopardi, Christopher Ius and Law to a new national record.
But his true reckoning awaits. Kennedy will go face-to-face with the world’s best sprinters in the world indoor world championships on Friday in Nanjing, China. “Calab tells me that I’m going to have a bit of a target on my back, because I’m going to have the world lead [time], and it’s going be an ‘outdoor world lead’,” Kennedy says. “I’m just excited to be able to back it up and to show them that it weren’t no fluke. Like, I can do this.”
Whatever the outcome on Friday, Kennedy is part of perhaps the strongest crop of men’s sprinters in Australia’s history with a potent future. In addition to the four who produced the national relay record, there is Rohan Browning who has been consistently the country’s fastest man for more than one Olympic cycle, and 19-year-old Sebastian Sultana, last year’s national 100m champion.
Then there is Gout Gout, who already has the 200m national record and is certain to improve on his 10.17s personal best in the 100m. The 17-year-old ran 10.04s in December but with an illegal tailwind.
Kennedy’s old high school of Gregory Terrace competes against Gout’s Ipswich Grammar School, although the pair of promising sprinters are far enough apart in age to have only run against each-other in the years since Kennedy graduated. “I didn’t realise how young he was, I thought he was like, maybe a year younger than me, but he’s four years younger than me and keeping up,” Kennedy says.
Gout has helped propel Australian athletics into a new golden age, that is set to peak at the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. The Australian team won a record 14 medals at the world under-20 championships in Peru last year, and the meets over coming weeks – including the Maurie Plant event in Melbourne on 29 March, the nationals in Perth in April and the Stawell Gift over Easter – are expected to draw record interest.
Kennedy, as the country’s form men’s 100m sprinter, is one of the biggest drawcards even if this year his performances have been overshadowed by Gout. “He’s brought so many more eyes to the sport in general that wouldn’t have been there in the past,” Kennedy says. “Maybe if he wasn’t there more people that have already been following track and field would have been talking about [my performances], but I think in total he’s definitely done more for me and the sport than if he wasn’t running at all.”
The warmth between Kennedy and his peers undermines the stereotypes of the hyper-competitive 100m, the traditional domain of the showmen of track and field. Kennedy says the current generation have built rapport due to the increase in investment in the national relay programs, where training camps have brought many of the country’s best runners in to work together on technique and changeovers. “There’s rarely any beef or dislike. Of course, you’ll get the banter and the chirping, but at the end of the day, it’s all pretty light and pretty fun,” he says. “We’re all just friends, we’re all pushing each other.”
Alongside father Adam (“one of the hardest working people I know”, Kennedy says) and mother Rachael, a former talented netballer, the sprinter’s core group of support includes his coach Andrew Iselin and exercise physiologist Matt Crear, girlfriend Sophie Thou, as well as siblings Emily and brother Henry, who has been known to jump into the comments online and stick up for his big brother. “He’s a machine, he’s like my best friend, I love that guy,” Kennedy says.
Kennedy’s support network and especially his mother have helped him manage type one diabetes, which requires monitoring of blood sugar levels and careful nutrition. But the engineering and commerce student at the University of Queensland who can right now be considered Australia’s fastest man says he doesn’t like making excuses.
“Even with the diabetes, people say how hard it must be to have that, but I’m never going to let something like that stop me from doing anything,” he says. “I’m not going to let anyone put a limit on what I’m capable of.”
